Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Hands-On Preview – Resurrected Warrior (TGS 2024)
The Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake was the expected overload of nostalgia and much more. First thing anyone notices in a remake is the graphics, and you can see for yourself in screens and videos that they don’t disappoint. Square Enix’s “HD 2D” visual style, seen elsewhere in the Octopath Traveler games and tactical RPG Triangle Strategy, is perfectly suited for Dragon Quest 3, a game whose original version was released 37 years and six console generations ago. Bathing in the afterglow of this demo, something crazy hit me: even DQ3’s existing remakes and ports would be considered retro, having been released on Super Famicom in the ’90s and Game Boy Color in 2000 (holy crap)!
The goal of a remake is to make an old game play the way we remember it playing, not necessarily how it did play. I’ve gone back to old Dragon Quest games, and lemme tell ya, they can be a pain. I tried to power my way through the Super Famicom Dragon Quest 5 and just couldn’t do it, despite allegedly loving that game. The interface, lack of modern options, and a dozen other things just stick out like sore thumbs — and not the fun kind of sore thumbs like you’d get after playing SNES fighting games. It needs more than a visual facelift, and thankfully, Dragon Quest 3 Remake has plenty more indeed.
Quality-of-life additions abound. Remember getting super lost in the original 2D versions of a lot of RPGs? Well, it sure happened to me a lot, anyway. Dragon Quest 3’s newest version includes a “memory” feature, allowing players to commit certain pieces of advice to memory and recall them later, which will help in avoiding wasted time and, presumably, making the most of hints that point toward secrets.
Story objectives are now marked on the map, reducing the time wondering where you’re supposed to go next. Likewise, the simple addition of a run button is a feature I didn’t realize I’d wanted so badly until it was at my fingertips.
Corners have not been cut here, with modern additions such as voice acting feeling welcome rather than just slapped on as a selling point for a press release. There were times I accidentally button-mashed through dialogue due to my situation — a news guy in something of a rush playing with a time limit at a huge gaming convention — but I didn’t regret the times I let the audio play out. It felt like what I’d expect if Dragon Quest III hadn’t existed until this year.
The one sore spot was the battle camera being locked into first-person view. The camera swoops in at the start and shows the player’s party briefly, but when the actions start rolling out, it zooms in and only shows the enemy. Effect animations happen, but we don’t get to see our heroes actually using them. We’ll see fire blast out from the bottom of the screen toward a monster near the top of it but not see the party member launch the attack. Instead of seeing our warrior actually slice a foe, we simply see a white slash cut across the air from seemingly nowhere while the enemy grimaces at the impact.
Even healing works this way. A green swirl will twist up from the bottom of the screen to the middle, right about where the recipient should be, but we don’t actually see our party member get healed.
I understand the reasoning behind it. It was like that for the first several Dragon Quest games (originally known as Dragon Warrior outside of Japan), and that look and feel hold a place in the hearts of longtime fans. Nostalgia is important. I fully get it. But in this, with everything else remade and bumped up and ready to amaze, it felt a little jarring to switch into battle and not even see my team. Some people won’t mind; others might easily overlook it, but there will be players who find that a major turnoff, especially in a long and battle-heavy RPG like Dragon Quest 3. But, to reiterate, this is a small gripe amid a long list of upsides.
It’s tough to ignore the unspoken asterisk of having only played a demo, but I was left feeling like this is exactly the way to do remakes of 2D games. When Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake is released on PS5, PC, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch in November of 2024, this looks to be the definitive way to play Dragon Quest 3, for newcomers or nostalgic old vets alike.
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